No, New Yorkers are not getting the largest middle class tax cut in 70 years

Gov. Kathy Hochul has claimed for months that her budget delivers to the middle class the largest tax cut in decades. 

During a rollout for the State of the State in February, Hochul held a conversation with mothers and said: "We also talked about a middle class tax cut, the largest in 70 years."

On May 2, she said in Albany that the state budget for 2025-26 contains "the largest middle class tax cut in over 70 years, the largest tax cut." 

Three days later, a CNN anchor asked Hochul about the spending plan, and Hochul said that it contains "the biggest tax cut we’ve had for the middle class in 70 years. It’s all about putting money back in their pockets." The same day, she made the claim again when she visited Long Island to talk about the budget, saying that it contained "the largest middle class tax rate decrease in 70 years." 

We started looking into her claim in April, when we heard Hochul make it on Bloomberg TV. The Department of Budget told us that she meant to say something different. She meant to say that personal income taxes would be at their lowest rate in 70 years for the middle class. Agency spokesman Tim Ruffinen pointed to rates for married couples filing jointly who earn between $161,550 and $323,000. In the enacted budget, the rate will go from 6% today (which is a marginal rate) to 5.9% in the 2026 tax year, and 5.8% in the 2027 tax year. For families earning less, married joint filers earning between $28,000 and $161,550, the rate will go from 5.5% today to 5.3% by the 2027 tax year. These rates decrease by .1 percentage points per year. These would be the lowest rates since 1959, Ruffinen told us. 

There is no standard definition for "middle class," and the state has wide income diversity across regions. The median household income in New York State is $84,578, according to Census data. The median household income in Erie County is $71,175. In New York City it’s $79,713. And in Westchester County, it’s $118,411. 

While misstating a fact during a press appearance can be understandable, Hochul has repeatedly made the same claim that her budget contains the largest middle class tax rate decrease in 70 years. 

But the income tax decrease in the 2025-26 budget, adopted on April 29, isn’t the largest in 70 years. The income tax rate applied to the excess of a certain threshold, known as a marginal rate, has fallen for middle-income New Yorkers by more than .1 percentage point in other years. 

In 1995, under then-Gov. George Pataki, marginal tax rates fell for the middle class by at least .5 percentage points, once the cuts were fully phased in in 1997. For a married couple filing jointly with two dependents earning $75,000, the effective rate went from 4.98% in 1994 to 4.11% in 1997, an average drop of .29 percentage points per year. For a married couple earning $100,000, the rate went from 5.36% in 1994 to 4.5% in 1997, an average drop of .29 percentage points per year. 

In 2012, the rate went down for middle-class taxpayers by 1.2 percentage points, depending on how middle-class is defined. Filers in adjacent tax brackets had decreases of .4 percentage points or 2.12 percentage points. Income tax rates fell by more than .1 percentage points in 2023 for some middle income filers. 

Experts warn of the pitfalls of comparing tax rates over 70 years. The definition of taxable income and the available tax credits and standard deductions has changed. What’s more, income brackets used today to differentiate personal income tax rates are not the same as those used 70 years ago. In 1995, brackets were widened. In 1958, the state canceled income taxes under unusual circumstances.

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"Beyond that anomaly, the tax structure and economic conditions of the 1950s, 1960s, or even early 2000s are dramatically different from today’s landscape," said Lucy Dadayan, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute who has studied state finances in New York. Differences in the economy and the middle class complicate comparisons from 70 years ago, as well as the fact that tax brackets have not been adjusted for inflation, Dadayan said.   

One long-time observer of state tax policy questioned the impact of the tax rate decrease.

"At the current inflation rate of 2.8%, the real savings from such a cut will be erased within two years," said E.J. McMahon, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. That’s because the budget does not index brackets or standard deductions or exemptions to reflect inflation, which the federal tax code has done for 40 years, he said. 

As far the claim that Hochul’s staff said she meant to make – that middle class tax rates would be at their lowest level in 70 years –  PolitiFact ruled on a similar claim in 2016 when Gov. Andrew Cuomo made it. We found his claim Mostly True. The middle-class rates contained in the new budget are lower than they were in 2016. 

Our ruling

Hochul has repeated that the state budget contains the largest middle class tax decrease in 70 years. Personal income taxes are not falling by the largest amount in 70 years, they fell more in other years, such as 1995 and 2012. 

We rate Hochul’s claim False.